


and i'll never go home again (drive around all night kissing your temples and praying you love me too)

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, not much dialogue, the other boys aren't even in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:37:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall just likes watching Harry a lot you know because he's never seen someone like him, someone that runs as if something is chasing him but he has all the time in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i'll never go home again (drive around all night kissing your temples and praying you love me too)

_To the sad boy in my math class… I think about you a lot._

Niall is gone for Harry Styles. Niall has been gone for Harry Styles ever since the boy moved to their small town in Alabama the summer of 11th grade with its high maintance people and its small minds and smaller personalities and material things and Niall saw him running in the fields behind his house barefoot as if his life depended on it. Niall hadn’t seen anyone in that field since his mom died. Harry has golden skin and he runs as if nothing else makes him happier than the sun on his skin and the animals breathing, _run child, you are now free._

Harry Styles is in his math class and he sits in the front and his back is always rigid and nobody speaks to him… it is as if he is nothing and he is just taking up space and Niall _hates_ that because Harry Styles shouldn’t be furniture, Harry Styles is more than that. Niall watches him a lot, watches the way he doodles in the notebook when the teacher is writing something that nobody particularly cares about but should. And Niall hates the way that he bolts out of the room before Niall can introduce himself before Niall can figure out how soft his hair is… or his eyes because he has beautiful eyes. So Niall writes him notes, little thoughts he has throughout the day and he sticks them in his locker.

_Isn’t the cafeteria food absolutely disgusting?_

Niall hopes Harry Styles doesn’t know it’s him because he doesn’t want that he just wants Harry to know that someone appreciates his existence. Nothing is prettier than Harry mid run on a September morning when the stalks of wheat have grown so high it’s as if they’ve made it their personal mission to block Harry from his view so sometimes he sneaks out of his house with his camera in his hand and his beat up converse with the floppy soles on his feet and sometimes he takes pictures of Harry.

Sometimes he’ll catch a smile amongst the concentration, amongst the furrowed brows and the wild windswept hair and the way he moves as if daring someone to _catch me if you can._ Niall wants to peel his shirt off and he wants to run after Harry and he just wants to see what’s so wonderful, he wonders if Harry thinks the earth has a heartbeat because Niall’s heard it sometimes when he’s writing or when he’s taking a picture or when he’s just laying down in his front yard with his friend Louis and his dog Chet and it’s like… the earth has a heart and it’s beating right under Niall’s ears. And Niall wants to catch it sometimes. Wants to watch the simple raw veins beat out into nothing… so the earth has a heart and Niall yearns for it.

_To the boy who runs barefoot… do you get blisters on your feet from all the running? Sometimes I get blisters in my brain from all the thinking._

Niall starts keeping a journal because his doctor says it’ll be good for him to write down what he’s feeling but all that is in his journal are pictures of Harry Styles and the sun when it rises in the morning and the wheat fields behind his house. He knows somewhere in the middle of that field there is a tree and it is tall, taller than man himself because his mother loved that tree and sometimes she would wake him up and something in her eyes would be: _crazy, wild, caged_. And they would trudge down the dirt road and follow the trail to the back and the wheat would tickle his skin and he’d be tired but he’d be with his mom who would rarely get out of bed but when she did she made him remember why they named storms after people. And the large sycamore tree would stand tall and proud against everything else and his mother, she would just sit in front of it and she’d tell him stories a lot of stories about how young and free she used to be… about how she got pregnant with him at the age of fifteen and how she was so beautiful but different so the people in the town didn’t appreciate her as much.

Harry Styles reads his notes and Niall sees him read them and with that blank face he always has, the one that gives nothing away he sticks the note in his jeans pockets and he continues on with that day while Niall wishes that Harry could notice him like he notices him. Niall goes to the county fair by himself because his dad is working- always working- and Louis went out to Colorado to see his dying grandmother and Niall’s all alone.

Until he gets on a ride and Harry is on the ride with him and he kind of just turns his head and he doesn’t smile or anything just looks at Niall and Niall’s breath whooshes out of him violently and he presses the heels of his palms to his eyes and hopes that it’s a dream. But it’s not and Harry is very much real and breathing even if it doesn’t seem like it half the time, sometimes Niall thinks Harry is something he made up out of his wild imagination something to keep him busy throughout the days that wasn’t his dog or Louis with his too tight pants and his too wide smile and the too fake way he’d appreciate things. Louis was his friend but he was also the embodiment of anybody in their town ever, he wondered if small mindedness could get passed on from generation to generation and then he stops wondering when the ride starts.

It’s fast and it’s spinning and it makes Niall nauseous every time he is thrusted up and down and his head flails and there is moment where he is spinning wildly in and out of control but he manages to pry his eyes open even if the wind catches them, makes it almost impossible but there is Harry eyes shut tight and hair rebelling against the wind and cheeks the color of the strawberries in the strawberry field behind Louis’ home and he’s just stunning… absolutely stunning that Niall’s heart sinks because nothing of that much beauty should be trapped in a place like this.

“You’re wonderful!” Niall screams… except he doesn’t but he really wants to though and the words are on the tip of his tongue and they are threatening to spill out and everything else he has ever wanted to utter to Harry Styles but there is nothing except for wind in his ear and his own screaming voice.

_Wake me when it’s over; wake me when I can breathe._

Niall’s not one to believe in fate or anything but Harry Styles is standing on his doorstep the next day with his tan skin turned ghostly white and his startling eyes and his deer caught in the headlights look and he says,

“Wanna see something?” Like it’s everyday that you show up to the home of someone you don’t talk to and you kind of just… speak. Niall’s endeared and he nods, doesn’t care what it is long as he’s with Harry and the sun doesn’t stop shining and his words don’t stop screaming at him to write and he can have his camera he’s fine.

“Yes.” The simple word has his breath rushing out of him and then he’s running back inside to get his camera and he’s shoving his beat up shoes on his feet and then they are walking side by side, Harry a bit taller and lankier and legs that stretch as far as the fault lines in San Diego and fingers so long they are like roads in the middle of New York City. Harry is a vision of something more than Niall could ever be, Harry is all these places that Niall can only dream of going to all rolled into one and Niall is just… a boy with a dead mom and dusty blonde hair and tiny freckles and ocean eyes and skin the color of vanilla, and there is nothing more to him.

Harry walks to his backyard with the wheat fields and nostalgia follows shortly behind him because he remembers his mom and her incessant chattering and Niall had prayed to god for him to make it go on forever until she had used up all the words of the English language and there was nothing else to say. Harry works with purpose and Niall follows until there they are by the tree but Harry just passes the tree and Niall finds his head swiveling because how far are they? Niall starts taking pictures as if his life depends on it and he takes up close pictures of Harry also, takes pictures of his face and the beauty marks that make constellations on his milky way.

There’s a lake, not a big lake in the least but a small lake that isn’t short of something Niall would call beautiful. And Niall knows beautiful, knows his mother when she’s smiling all straw like blonde hair falling down her shoulders and beautiful blue eyes fluttering close and he’s seen his father drive his truck and how he had tried to teach Niall about it and he’s seen so much beauty that the lake doesn’t shock him. Harry’s smile when they reach it does cause he’s never seen Harry smile like that, so unabashedly and beautiful as if daring someone to take it away from him.

“Hey.” Harry says turning so he’s looking at him and Niall blinks against the afternoon sun and he turns his head to see if he can see his house but he can’t. He can’t see anything that isn’t endless wheat and grass and it should scare him, the idea of being in the middle of a lake with a boy who he hasn’t had a real conversation with ever but he just turns back around and he says.

“Hey.”

“I was just running one day and I found this ya’know.” Harry says looking at him. “And I thought about how you’d like it.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.” Harry sticks his hands in his pocket and he pulls out a piece of paper torn out of a notebook and Niall’s breath catches in his throat and Harry hands it to him tentatively and Niall takes it and his eyes skim it.

_Sometimes I wish I could swim forever ya’know to escape here, to go there… wherever there is. There aren’t many beaches in Alabama._

Niall looks up at Harry but he’s already turning around and peeling off his shirt and his jeans and Niall can’t help but stare and Harry turns his head and blinks at Niall with that blank face that gives nothing away.

“Come on.” He says so Niall comes.

_People used to feel pity for me because of my mom and I used to hate it… but pity’s the easiest emotion so I don’t blame them anymore, I’ll mention them when I do big things. To the people who pitied me… you were among most._

They become friends and they swim together and Harry doesn’t talk much like Niall would’ve imagined but sometimes when their fingers and toes have shriveled into prunes they’ll climb back and lay on the ground with the sun hitting their chests and Harry will tell him little tidbits of his life that Niall is so happy to know.

“I’m from Vermont, snows a lot there. People here aren’t like people in Vermont.”

“My mom sells houses to people.”

“I don’t know where my dad is.”

“I had a sister once. And then she took off and I don’t have a sister anymore.”

“I like poetry but that’s kind of girly huh?”

“My grandparents want me to enlist in the army when I hit 18. I wanna drive to the moon.” It’s a whole bunch of things that Niall tries his hardest to understand because Harry’s a puzzle, he makes Niall flinch at his brutal honesty and Niall loves every minute of it. And he loves that Harry chose him to be his friend because Niall’s been dying to have a friend that wasn’t Louis or his dog and Niall… Niall wants to kiss Harry too sometimes like when he’s talking real slow and his lips are trying to form words that neither of them quite understand and Niall just wants to lean over and taste his freshwater lips and wonder if they taste like the sun. And being around Harry is like someone took some livewire and shocked him with it, everything in his system hypersensitive and he’s just along for the ride. Man, does he like that boy.

Niall doesn’t know Harry has a car until he’s in it with Harry and they’re driving around at four in the morning and there is music that Niall’s never heard before drowning out Niall’s thoughts and he fumbles with his camera and he takes a picture of Harry. Harry smiles and he says.

“I like you, Niall.” Like it’s nothing in the world like he just said: “It’s gonna rain tomorrow, Niall.” And Niall just swallows and blushes like a maiden from the movies and he leans his head on the headrest of the car seat and he says.

“I like you too.” Because he really really does, more than he could ever express and more than anyone has ever given him. Harry reaches over suddenly and his cold hand touches Niall’s hot one and they are suddenly holding each other’s and Niall’s just staring at them because he’s never held hands with a boy he’s wanted to kiss. So Harry drives them all the way to a diner at the outskirts of the city and they eat in the car and Harry spreads a blanket out in the back of his truck and Niall doesn’t really get it until they are kissing. Until Harry’s lips are sun flare covering up his moon and they are meeting finally and Niall breathes a sigh of relief into Harry’s mouth and he wants to take a picture of that, wants to capture the way Harry’s hand slides under his shirt and spreads out on his stomach causing him to shiver. It doesn’t wander it just sits there and Niall likes that.

_I got you._

It says and Niall doesn’t know much about a lot but he knows this… he knows that Harry likes him… really likes him like Niall likes him and they’re gonna make it work he promises.

Niall is gone for Harry Styles; Harry Styles is gone for him too.

 


End file.
